Google Book Digitization Project Moves to Scripps Library

More than 188,000 UCSD Libraries' books scanned since April

December 10, 2008 – The Google Book Search Library Project aimed at digitizing the holdings of the world's top libraries started digitizing books last spring from the UC San Diego Libraries' East Asian Collection and the International Relations & Pacific Studies (IR/PS) Library. UC San Diego was the first university in Southern California to participate in the global project.

Starting Jan. 7, 2009, the Google scanning of UC San Diego library collections will shift to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library. Print materials will be shipped offsite in biweekly batches for scanning by Google. The packing, shipping, scanning, and reshelving operations will make portions of the collections unavailable for up to five weeks. The project is expected to continue until summer 2009 and will ultimately result in Google Book Search access to most of the Scripps print collection.

As was the case with IR/PS and East Asia materials, titles not on the shelf with a Roger status of "OUT4SCANNING", can be requested through Interlibrary Loan staff, who will help to borrow items from other libraries.

The last shipment of UC San Diego titles for 2008 went out from the East Asia collection last week. Google and the Libraries will pause the project over the holidays, then resume the project with the Scripps collection in January. Once that project is complete—later in the spring or early summer—digitization of the East Asia collection will resume.